Subscribe to this blog

Follow by Email, Like Cool People Do

Search This Blog

Pages

Excuse Me, But I'm Very Important and Busy

I do the opera singing, yes? Yes. And that, with my day job and church obligations (did I mention I am a Most Holy Elder at my church? Not that we're supposed to call ourselves that, but this is my blog, so bam), means I don't have a lot of time for ye olde reading. And when I DO somehow get a free day, my mind goes "Ehhhhh you don't REALLY want to read, right? You can watch reruns of Daria. That seems like a productive use of your time."

Anyway, the fall is when young artist program auditions mainly happen, which means I should be cloistering myself in a practice room (i.e. my bedroom) for hours on end, only coming out to grab the occasional tub of hummus and then skulking back. So of course this is the time when I have not two, not three, but FOUR books I'm really excited about. FOUR.

1. Picnic at Hanging Rock - This is one of my favorite movies. And I just added up the different movies I've seen (...I have a boring job; I don't recommend doing this, for you will weep over the time lost in your life) dating back to 1931, and it's at least over 1,000. So out of ONE THOUSAND MOVIES, Picnic at Hanging Rock is probably in my top 10. I looked for the book at the library, and the entire Chicago library system has one copy. Which I am currently reading. It has lovely lines like "Even as a little girl, Irma Leopold had wanted above all things to see everyone happy with the cake of their choice."

It's pretty slow, like the movie, but in a lovely way. If you don't know it at all, it takes place in 1900 in Australia, a group of schoolgirls goes to Hanging Rock for a picnic (eh? like the title? see?) and four go missing. If you require closure, this is perhaps not the book for you.

2. Doomsday Book - OMG I AM INTO THIS BOOK LIKE WHOA. But it's currently on pause, because it's way long, and Picnic is like 200 pages. But it involves time travel and the 1300s, and BOTH those things make me really happy. And guess who was the queen in 1320? ISABELLE OF FRANCE. Who is one of my favorite monarchs of ever. She's the French princess in Braveheart played by Sophie Marceau, WHICH, by the way, is one of the only positive portrayals of her in film. She's commonly perceived as terrible, but she had a super-shitty life thanks to her husband Edward II, so let's all cut her some slack and remember she was the mother of Edward III, who was kind of cool, yes? Sure.

Oh yeah, the book. So I've read a bit of it and it's amazing. Like, as I read, I get sad, because there is thusly less of it. Boo.

3. The Crimson Petal and the White - This looks so fricking good I can barely contain myself. It's postmodern and Victorian, which are my two favorite things, because things being meta STILL blows my mind. Like, in Possession, when Byatt's talking about fairytales and is all "Because we all know, don't we, that the elder two brothers must fail and the youngest must win the hand of the princess" (or something like that), and I was AGHAST because you know these rules but you don't TALK about them.

So yeah. This looks great, but it is also massively massive, which makes it difficult to carry around the streets of Chicago without looking like a hunchback. Plus I got those two others mentioned above.

4. Beauty Queens - By Libba Bray. This is probably the least laudable of my selections, but I've seen it praised in like three blogs. I mean, Lord of the Flies for ladies? Okay. I tried reading Lord of the Flies twice, and I put it down both times, because I was completely bored. "Hey, I wonder what'll happen if we put a group of young boys on an island." "OMG They're HORRIBLE to each other!"

Don't try telling me it's about other things. Because I don't care about those other things. This book is described on Amazon as "Teen beauty queens. A Lost-like island. Mysteries and dangers. No access to email." I mean, all righty then, sold. I'll read that. And it's currently sitting on my bed along with these other books.

Whatever, I can have opera AND books. Sandwich and Floyd. All! I can have it all!

I can't find the appropriate gif of Liz eating the sandwich, so here's the Cheesy Blasters song:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Okay, people. Here it is. Where you sign up to read the entire Harry Potter series (or to reminisce fondly), starting January 2013, assuming we all survive the Mayan apocalypse. I don't think I'm even going to get to Tina and Bette's reunion on The L Word until after Christmas, so here's hopin'.

You guys know how this works. Sign up if you want to. If you're new to the blog, know that we are mostly not going to take this seriously. And when we do take it seriously, it's going to be all Monty Python quotes when we disagree on something like the other person's opinion on Draco Malfoy. So be prepared for your parents being likened to hamsters.

If you want to write lengthy, heartfelt essays, that is SWELL. But this is maybe not the readalong for you. It's gonna be more posts with this sort of thing:

We're starting Sorceror's/Philosopher's Stone January 4th. Posts will be on Fridays. The first post will be some sort of hilarious/awesome que…

Acclaimed (in England mostly) lady Caitlin Moran has a novel coming out. A NOVEL. Where before she has primarily stuck to essays. Curious as we obviously were about this, I and a group of bloggers are having a READALONG of said novel, probably rife with spoilers (maybe they don't really matter for this book, though, so you should totally still read my posts). This is all hosted/cared for/lovingly nursed to health by Emily at As the Crowe Flies (and Reads) because she has a lovely fancy job at an actual bookshop (Odyssey Books, where you can in fact pre-order this book and then feel delightful about yourself for helping an independent store). Emily and I have negotiated the wonders of Sri Lankan cuisine and wandered the Javits Center together. Would that I could drink with her more often than I have.

INTRODUCTION-wise (I might've tipped back a little something this evening, thus the constant asides), I am Alice. I enjoy the Pleistocene era of megafauna and drinking Shirley Templ…

So this article came out, which isn't really groundbreaking at all, but it happens to have been published the day after I watched part of the NOVA special "Becoming Human," so it's been on my brain anyway.

I was checking out a book a while ago called Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans, and it was all "Oh dude, our ancestors probably didn't even LOOK at Neanderthals. No way. 'Cause they would've been like, RIDICULOUSLY ugly."

That's right. Your lady ancestor, at some point, sidled up to a Neanderthal gentleman and said "Hey. How's it goin'?

Because all non-Africans ('cause the Africans stayed put instead of traipsing around becoming the Don Juans of prehistoric Europe) have 1-4% Neanderthal DNA. So the above scenario DEFINITELY happened. Which is disheartening NOT because of my huge Neanderth…